Perhydropolysilanes have been studied and pursued as materials for making semiconductor films in electronics using coating and printing technologies. Different methods have been developed to make different perhydropolysilanes, such as dehydrocoupling of arylsilanes with subsequent conversion to perhydropolysilanes and polymerizing perhydrosilane monomers. There is a tremendous advantage to using oligosilanes or polysilanes for printed electronics applications, as these compositions can be formulated into inks that may be useful in a variety of solution deposition techniques to form low cost, high performance silicon devices. However, possible monomers in the polymerization of silanes (such as cyclopentasilane, Si5H10) to form polysilanes are not commercially available, difficult to make (especially at large scale) and hence expensive, time-consuming and/or inefficient to produce.
Hence, there is a need for catalysts and catalytic reaction processes that can convert commercially available (hydro)silanes to polysilanes economically, easily, in high yield, and high purity. Furthermore, many commercially available silane precursors may have carbon-containing groups (e.g., alkyl, aryl, etc.), which can result in unacceptably high levels of carbon impurities in films formed from inks containing polysilanes from such silane precursors. Also, oligo- and polysilanes may be prepared using metal based catalysts that may contaminate the desired product and/or require relatively lengthy or inefficient purification steps to remove metal impurities. Processes for producing electronically useful polysilanes that can utilize commercially available starting materials are desired.